Thursday, December 29, 2016

Russia Learned in Aleppo What to Do with Ukrainian Cities, Moscow TV Host Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 29 – Most people
have been horrified by what Russian and Syrian forces did in Aleppo even if
they accept claims by Putin and Asad that the civilian population there
included terrorists and those hiding terrorists. But a Moscow TV host says that
Aleppo was an “easy” victory and has taught Russia how it should deal with
Ukrainian cities in the future.

On this week’s “Evening with
Vladimir Solovyev” on Russia’s First Channel, the former “foreign minister of the
DNR” Aleksandr Kofman and former Kyiv political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko who
now lives in Russia discussed how the Russian army should act to seize
Ukrainian cities.

For his part, Ishchenko suggested
that it wouldn’t be worthwhile to send Russian ground forces into major
Ukrainian cities because doing so would involve “enormous losses for the
Russian army.But other participants on
the Moscow program disagreed and said that Aleppo shows the way Moscow could
proceed.

“They took Aleppo comparatively
quickly,” Solovyev said, “and there they learned how to solve such tasks. The
DNR army has learned how to fight in cities. One needn’t worry. The people of
Ukraine will not fight for them.”

Kofman agreed. He said he not only
believed but “knows” that “as soon as our forces approach any city, the
Ukrainian army will leave it forever. This is a fact.”

That almost certainly isn’t “a fact”
except in the post-fact world many in Moscow and elsewhere appear to have
entered. But there is a real fact here: It is horrifying to think that the
tragedy of Aleppo is now viewed as a model for future Russian behavior, an
attitude that recalls how some in Nazi Germany viewed the slaughter at Guernica
as a model for the Luftwaffe.